Thangam Debbonaire

Thangam Rachel Debbonaire (born 3 August 1966)^[1] is a British Labour Party politician. Debbonaire was a professional cellist and has also worked as National Research Manager for Respect. She became Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol West at the 2015 General Election, when she defeated the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams.^[2] Shortly after winning Bristol West, Debbonaire was diagnosed with breast cancer,^[3] and did not attend a Parliamentary vote from June 2015 until March 2016.^[4]

In January 2016 she started to plan a phased return to Westminster from February,^[5] and was appointed as shadow minister for Culture, Media and Sport^[6] until resigning on 27 June 2016 (among many others) because of her lack of confidence in the Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn.^[7] She rejoined his front bench team as a whip in October that year.

Early life and education

Born in 1966 to a Tamil father and an English mother, Debbonaire was educated at two independent schools, Bradford Girls' Grammar School and Chetham's School of Music. She then took the first stage of a mathematics degree at the University of Oxford whilst at the same time training as a cellist at the Royal College of Music. Subsequently she gained an MSc in Management, Development and Social Responsibility at the University of Bristol.^[1][8]

Early career

Before becoming an MP, she performed professionally as a classical cellist, including for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.^[1][8] She has worked as National Children's Officer for the Women's Aid Federation of England (1991–1998), for which she moved to St Werburghs in Bristol,^[8][9] and later as National Research Manager for Respect, an anti-domestic violence organisation (2006–2008).^[1][10]

She has co-authored two books, and a number of papers, about domestic violence.^[1][11] She was a trustee of the University of Bristol Students' Union.^[8]

Political career

Debbonaire was elected as the MP for Bristol West in May 2015, and was diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks afterwards. Debbonaire said she never doubted that she would return to Parliament and credited listening to classical music with helping her recovery.^[12] She subsequently called on Parliament to allow for MPs to vote remotely after she was unable to participate in votes during her recovery.^[13]

During her treatment period she was appointed as Shadow Culture Minister by Jeremy Corbyn. According to Debbonaire, she found out about the role when a journalist contacted her in hospital in response to a Labour press release announcing that she was taking it on, and was then briefly removed from the position before she got a chance to meet with Corbyn.^[14][15] According to Debbonaire's colleague Chi Onwurah, whose frontbench brief was briefly split with her, Corbyn's communication with both women, directly or indirectly, was practically non-existent.^[16] She resigned from the position on 27 June 2016 following a series of other resignations, saying that she did not believe Corbyn was the right person to lead the Labour Party into the next election.^[17]

On 12 October 2016, Debbonaire accepted an appointment as a shadow whip in Corbyn's front bench team.^[18]

Alleged Twitter threats

In August 2016, a student at the University of Bristol was investigated after telling Debbonaire to "get in the sea", interpreted by her as a death threat. Following a complaint to the university by Debbonaire concerning that tweet and others, including one which called her a "traitor", the student apologised, deleted the tweet, and closed her Twitter account. The tweet was posted on the day of the funeral of Jo Cox, another Labour MP, who was murdered in June 2016.^[19][20]

Selected bibliography

Books

• Debbonaire, Thangam; Mullender, Audrey (2000). Child protection and domestic violence. Birmingham: Venture Press. ISBN 9781861780423. 

Chapters in books

• Debbonaire, Thangam (1994), "Children in refuges", in Mullender, Audrey; Morley, Rebecca, Children living with domestic violence: putting men's abuse of women on the child care agenda, London Concord, Massachusetts: Whiting & Birch., ISBN 9781871177725. 

Journal articles

• Debbonaire, Thangam; Mullender, Audrey; Kelly, Liz; Hague, Gill; Malos, Ellen (May 1998). "Working with children in women's refuges". Child & Family Social Work. Wiley. 3 (2): 87–98. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2206.1998.00074.x. 

Papers

• Debbonaire, Thangam; Debbonaire, Emilie; Walton, Kevin (2004). Evaluation of work with domestic abusers in Ireland. Dublin: Department of Justice, Equality, and Law Reform. OCLC 65202770. 
• Debbonaire, Thangam (2008). Respect position statement (with research review) on gender and domestic violence. London: Respect. 
• Debbonaire, Thangam (2015). Responding to diverse ethnic communities in domestic violence perpetrator programmes. London: Respect.  Pdf.

References